BJP looks to shed its secular image, go saffron again

Is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) changing colour and adopting saffron again? Is it about to dump its assiduously sought secular image in favour of the fundamentalist posture of yore, and indeed go back to the identity of the Jan Sangh?

The answers that emerged from the meeting of the party's national executive in Bhopal last month were indecisive, but there seems little doubt that at least one increasingly aggressive section of the party leadership would like to see a new political dawn for the party tinged with saffron.

What else, they ask, can the party do when it has been humbled in the elections, lost the 'Hindu vote' to the Congress(I). And found its ambitions of developing into a far more secular, national alternative ground in the dust?

The key document that might have paved the way for this fundamental shift back to fundamentalism was the report of a working group set up to review the party's performance in the five years of its existence.

But as things turned out, the Bhopal meet was not as decisive as it might have been. The report was ready only on the second day of the three-day meeting, and there was not enough time to debate it.

Besides, the party leadership also decided to hasten slowly. The report will now be discussed at a camp of party workers in September before the leadership decides on its recommendations.

Nevertheless, the report itself contained enough to fuel media speculation that the BJP had, as the Indian Express noted, decided to look "further back in a bid to move forward": a reference to the recommendation that the party jettison 'Gandhian socialism' as its political philosophy and replace it with 'integral humanism', a somewhat mystifying man-is-all-important creed evolved in the 1960s by party ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

BJP leaders, however, were at pains to argue that the replacement did not mean the party was turning its back on Gandhi, whom they admitted into their pantheon only in 1980. Explaining the rationale for their recommendation. Krishanlal Sharma, convenor of the 12-member working group, said: "The Gandhian approach and socialism are not cohesive concepts. One stands for decentralisation and the other advocates statism. The concept was a legacy from our days in the Janata and we decided to have a more objective look at it."

Murli Manohar Joshi, another member of the group, argued that the dissatisfaction with Gandhian socialism persisted because the leadership failed to convince the rank and file that it was no departure from integral humanism. "Workers continued to think that socialism meant statism while the leadership accepted socialism because of its concern for social justice."

There is little doubt that Gandhian socialism was never accepted even in the party's highest echelons. Said Vijaya Raje Scindia, the party's vice-president, who had opposed the creed when the party adopted it at its plenary session in Bombay in December 1980: "The concept was adopted in a hurry then and was sought to be imposed from the top levels of the party. I was personally never in its favour."

Media commentators have also interpreted the recommendation as a capitulation to a section in the party which wants to go back to the principles and policies of the Jan Sangh.

"There is a section within the BJP which wants to make it a Hindu Party (but) the Hindu is liberal, secular and he wants a party whose doors will be open to all." Atal Behari Vajpayee

Party President Atal Behari Vajpayee had himself posed this question when he suggested the setting up of the group at the last meeting of its executive.

The group did not answer the poser directly but related the events leading to the formation of the party and concluded that the party had "taken the correct decision when it decided to merge Jan Sangh into the Janata Party, a wise decision when it decided to come out of the Janata Party and a right decision when it chose to be BJP".

In a way, the group's evasiveness reflects the continuing ambivalence on this issue within the party. Vajpayee heads the small group which mainly comprises non-Jan Sangh, non-RSS elements like Sikander Bakht, Rajya Sabha member Jaswant Singh, former law minister Shanti Bhushan and leading lawyer Ram Jetbmalani, who believe there is no going back.

Leading the hardliners is Scindia who feels the party has gained nothing by adopting principles and postures which differ little from other parties like the Congress(I) or Janata. Rooting for them from the sidelines is former Bharatiya Jan Sangh president Balraj Madhok who says derisively that the BJP has become a "B team" of the Congress(I). Many media commentators agree that the main crisis is one of identity, of the party being seen as no different from the Congress(I).

As The Tribune noted: "It does not pay to be an imitation of the Congress(I) when the original is basking in the bright sunshine of an electoral landslide."

Vajpayee is very forthright and clear-headed on this issue. Unlike the hardliners who will not even admit that there are two streams of opinion within the party, Vajpayee does not hesitate to admit that "there is a section within the BJP which wants to make it a Hindu party because the Hindus have no party of their own.''

This section points to the way in which the Congress(I) fruitfully projected itself as a party for the Hindus in the last general elections and seeks to "thwart the Congress(I) in its attempt to become the party of Hindus."

But Vajpayee, arguing differently, says there is no such thing as Hindu interests. "Hindus identify themselves with the national interest," he points out. He also believes that there is nothing like the Hindu vote and says: "The Hindu is liberal, secular and he wants a party whose doors will be open to all. Hindu society can never be fundamentalist."

According to him, the BJP faces no "identity crisis"; what it needs to resolve is "whether it wants to remain a small pressure group or become a national alternative. No sectarian party can do this (the latter) and those who fight elections know this."

Jaswant Singh agrees: "BJP's current problems are the problems of growth, of evolving from a small, homogeneous pressure group to a heterogeneous, widely dispersed party. The BJP was in the process of growth when it received a check. Hence, the introspection."

And this introspection is likely to last for some time. Says K.R. Malkani, former editor of the Organiser. "The process of cry stallising political lessons from electoral reverses is still on. The BJP has been at the crossroads since the elections and will be there for some more time."

Pramod Mahajan, party secretary and member of the working group, feels it will be at least a year before the party acquires a new and clearer image.

BJP plenum in 1980: Winds of change

Yet it is somewhat disingenuous to say that only the electoral losses have induced the introspection. The BJP has faced an identity problem ever since it split away from the Janata in April 1980. Even while doing well electorally - the party's high point was the April 1982 election in Himachal Pradesh when it almost pipped the Congress(I) to the electoral post - it realised that its image was its albatross.

A keynote paper, remarkable for its rhetoric and its optimism, circulated at a workers' camp in September 1981, had argued that if only the party showed faith and confidence in its newly-acquired secular and liberal image, it would truly emerge as a national alternative (INDIA TODAY, April 15,1982).

At one point the document argued: "Only our programme and policies can save the country: only our leaders are tested and trusted, only ours is a nation-wide party. We work up to only 25 per cent of our capacity." The paper had extrapolated that the party should win 243 seats in the next parliamentary elections (it won two of the 224 it contested).

But as the INDIA TODAY report had pointed out, even then an intense debate raged in the party over its image: the progressives were dominant because the party was on an electoral upswing.

Some media observers were arguing last fortnight that the liberals in the BJP were now on the retreat. But they could not produce sufficient evidence to back their observation. Jaswant Singh, one of the liberals, maintained that he felt under no kind of pressure: "I have not felt inhibited. I continue to hold all the responsibilities I had."

Yet it is undeniable that the party is groping towards a new equilibrium in which some of the mannequins on its shop window would be changed: the report of the working group discussed at Bhopal last fortnight noted that the party was acquiring some "stay-puts".

Vajpayee signalled that he was volunteering to be the first change when he announced at a press conference that he would not contest the presidential elections due in November.

Significantly enough, Vajpayee announced the decision in response to a query on what steps the party proposed to take to bridge the "communication gap" between the leadership and the workers.

The party's ambitions have not been pruned: Vajpayee noted with satisfaction that the report had said the BJP should put up candidates for all 542 Lok Sabha seats in the next elections. And the attempt to give the party a clearer image has already begun.

The Bhopal resolution that India should make a nuclear bomb, a stand which raised memories of the Jan Sangh's hawkish postures on defence, was the first step in repositioning itself as the party most concerned with the nation's security. Said Vajpayee: "We pre-empted Rajiv."

But as a member of the working group said, the party will not make the same mistake it did in 1980 of hastily accepting ill-defined policies and stands. Vajpayee himself was categorical that the issue of becoming a reincarnation of the Jan Sangh was closed for good.

"Whether I remain the president or not, there is no going back," he told INDIA TODAY. But the debate will go in the party on all other issues. As Jaswant Singh said: "The mistake will be to conclude that the debate has concluded."

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